The Man Who Wasn't There
by GakuenAlicefan27
Summary: He almost doesn't see him, distracted as he is with keeping his eyelids open, but he does catch sight of someone standing to his left. When he looks, the masked man stares back at him and Aaron yelps. He drops his books and scurries away, but when he looks back over his shoulder, the corridor is empty.- Or: Aaron is a child with a war on his shoulders. His mind takes the toll.


A/N: Hello, everyone! I've been wanting to write something like that for a long time. I really loved the way this fic turned out, and I hope you love it as well!

Warning: This fic contains mental health issues and depictions of mental illness

I also published this fic on AO3 (username: MidnightHalo27)

This fic begins near the end of the Iron Year and ends a few months into the Copper Year. It is not compliant with The Copper Gauntlet.

Disclaimer: The Magisterium book series belongs to Cassandra Clare and Holly Black, not me. The excerpt in the beginning is from the poem "Antigonish" and belongs to William Hughes Mearns.

I hope you like it! Reviews, kudos, etc are amazing! Constructive criticism is very welcome, but flames will be used to roast marshmallows.

* * *

 **The Man Who Wasn't There**

 _by: GakuenAlicefan27_

* * *

"As I was going up the stair  
I met a man who wasn't there!  
He wasn't there again today,  
Oh how I wish he'd go away!"

When I came home last night at three,  
The man was waiting there for me  
But when I looked around the hall,  
I couldn't see him there at all!

Antigonish, William Hughes Mearns

* * *

The first time it happens, it's only for an instant.

It's nearing the end of the Iron year, and Aaron, Call and Tamara are heading to the cafeteria when something flashy catches Aaron's gaze in the corner of his eyes. He turns to look, and when his eyes fall on the figure of The Enemy of Death, mask shining under the light of the torches and standing at the top of a stairwell to the right, he feels all the blood leave his face.

He trips on a rock and falls to the ground, and when he looks again, just a moment later, The Enemy is gone.

He keeps looking at the empty spot above the stairwell, as if expecting The Enemy to materialize out of thin air, till Call asks him if something's wrong. Aaron asks them if they saw something weird, but they respond in the negative.

He does his best to calm his erratic heart, and convinces himself that his eyes were just playing tricks on him.

~x~

The second time it happens, Aaron is by himself, going back to his chambers from the library, where he spent the night studying chaos magic theory. Technically, he's not supposed to be awake at that hour, but he had been having difficulty controlling his magic lately, and two recent meetings with The Assembly had reminded him exactly how much was on his shoulders.

He almost doesn't see him, distracted as he is with keeping his eyelids open, but he does catch sight of someone standing to his left. When he looks, the masked man stares back at him and Aaron yelps. He drops his books and scurries away, but when he looks back over his shoulder, the corridor is empty.

He stops, looking from left to right like a madman, but there's nothing hiding in the shadows. Cautiously, and with his heart on his throat, he uses air magic to grab his books and hurries back to his quarters as if the devil himself were after him.

When he is in the comfort of his bed, still trembling and looking at the ceiling, he tells himself his sleepy brain is to blame.

~x~

A month passes by, and Aaron doesn't see anything else, so he manages to put the incidents aside and labels them as nothing important. Perhaps it is wrong of him to do so, but he can't be judged for wanting to have some peace of mind.

~x~

Summer break comes and it's at the same time wonderful and horrible; wonderful because he's with Tamara instead of with a foster family, and horrible because Call isn't there with them and because of all the soirees the Makar has to attend.

He's being paraded around, performing chaos tricks party after party, and he knows that it's all propaganda; to give people hope, to boost morale, to make people feel safer, but he can't understand how anyone can feel safe when they are betting all their cards on a teenage boy who spent pretty much his whole life being no one.

They say to look powerful is to be powerful, but they are wrong. Constantine Madden doesn't do any of these things; he hasn't shown his face in more than a decade, and he doesn't need to. People still fear him, people still cower at the mention if his name, because looks are not power: power is power, and Constantine has it.

~x~

He doesn't see anything strange while at The Gables (yes he does, glimpses here and there, but nothing too clear, or so he tells himself), but there are nights in which he wants to bury his head into his pillow and scream himself hoarse.

~x~

After he goes back to the Magisterium, it doesn't take long for him to see Constantine again.

He and Call are on their way back from walking Havoc, and suddenly Aaron sees him standing at the end of the hall.

He does not stop walking, but he can feel a strange buzz building up inside his ears. He looks at Call, who's staring straight ahead, but he doesn't seem to be seeing anything out of the ordinary. He looks back at the man, and he keeps looking until they reach where he is and Call walks right through him without even blinking.

Now, Aaron can't invent excuses anymore.

~x~

Once it becomes clear that this is not something Aaron can ignore, the first thing that comes to his mind is the possibility that The Enemy's forces have cast some kind of spell on him; something to destroy his sanity so they won't even have to fight him in person.

He doesn't want to alarm anyone though, so he tries to be as discreet as possible when asking Master Rufus about protective measures.

It's not much help. Master Rufus assures him that The Assembly has taken every precaution to guarantee Aaron's safety of body and mind against external attacks. Not only that, Master Rufus says, but the Magisterium itself has extremely heavy and advanced wards for a wide array of purposes.

Aaron bites his tongue before he says something rude, like how these wards did not prevent Call and Tamara from sneaking away after him when Drew kidnapped him.

He tries to look for spells on his own, but he can't understand half the things the advanced textbooks say, so he stops before he sets fire to something by accident.

~x~

It happens again. And again. And Aaron starts having trouble sleeping when it happens once in his room.

He starts chewing at his nails, and when his friends ask him about it he says he's just stressed out because of the upcoming tests.

He wonders if he looks as frayed as his nerves feel.

~x~

The next day, he goes to the library and grabs a book on History of Mage Society. He flips through the pages till he reaches the part about the war with The Enemy, and finds a picture of Constantine Madden. He had seen pictures of him before, but it had always been in the attire he had become known for, with a mask firmly covering his face.

But the picture he finds is not of The Enemy per see, but of Constantine Madden the boy, probably in his late teens or twenty at max. His face is already scarred, and his eyes are a steely, stormy grey that make Aaron feel uncomfortable for some reason he can't pinpoint. He was just a few years older than Aaron when that picture was taken, but he'd already killed his brother, was already on the warpath. On the next page, there is a picture of Verity Torres, barely fourteen or fifteen.

Aaron closes the book and thinks that there's a war coming, and nobody knows when, and he has to be ready. He's never met Constantine Madden in the flesh, but one day he will, and it will either kill or be killed.

Just like Verity.

~x~

Call and Tamara are starting to get suspicious.

He doesn't want to tell them, not because he doesn't trust them, but because he knows the war scares them too. Tamara tries to seem sure and optimistic, but he sees the way her eyes roam over the room at times, as if she's expecting to be attacked any minute.

And Call…he's been different since the bowling alley; acting distant, quieter, as if he spends most of his time lost in thought. The mere mention of Constantine's name has him going paler than a ghost, and Aaron thinks that everything that's happened must have been though on him, who lost his mother in the war and didn't even want to come to the Magisterium in the first place.

How would they react if he told them that he's been seeing The Enemy of Death around the corners? What would be worse: if they thought he was going crazy or if they believed him and couldn't sleep at night anymore?

He feels his throat constricting and begins counting to ten. He breathes in, breathes out, in, out, in, out, in…

~x~

This goes on for a while, until one night, after Aaron hasn't slept well in days, he gets up to grab a glass of water and blacks out.

He wakes up in the infirmary nearly a day later, and the doctor tells him he was found passed out in his bedroom. She says he was showing signs of sleep deprivation, and asks if he hasn't been sleeping well. Aaron lies and tells her he's been with insomnia the past few days

Master Rufus comes in after the doctor leaves. He seems worried, and suggests they take a break from chaos lessons for a few days, until Aaron is feeling better. Aaron refuses, saying he'll be alright soon enough and hoping Master Rufus doesn't notice the way his hands are shaking. Aaron thinks he doesn't buy it, but he doesn't press the matter any further.

Call and Tamara are allowed in after that, both of them worried sick. They bring him sweets and a deck of cards to help pass the time but, unlike Master Rufus, they don't pretend they believe him when he says he's gonna be fine.

With no way out, he promises he'll tell them later, when they're alone in their chambers.

~x~

He ends up telling them more than he would have liked to, but not the whole truth. He confesses to the hallucinations and the panic attacks, but lies about how long they've been going on and the frequency with which they happen.

Tamara thinks what he did in the beginning, that The Enemy put some kind of incantation on him; that he's found a way to attack him without even being there. Aaron tells her about the countermeasures and protection spells placed on him, but she still insists on doing her own research on the matter. He didn't expect anything less.

He sees the way Call looks as if he's gonna throw up, and he's glad he didn't tell them everything.

They make him promise to tell them if he ever has hallucinations again. Aaron nods, looks over their shoulders where Constantine Madden is standing just a few feet away, and doesn't say anything.

* * *

A/N: Thank you for reading!

You can find me on tumblr as agarotado27dejunho to discuss anything Magisterium related or just say "Hi!"


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